After a few years of writing this blog the premise of it has changed considerably and it’s time for an update. The title of my blog is inspired by The Good Life (the 70s British sitcom) and the journey of Tom and Barbara Good (also my pen name) in an attempt to leave behind the world of commercialism and become self-sufficient. An amazingly courageous goal and it made for some mighty funny TV. I too am on a journey to live a simpler life, growing vegetables, cooking from scratch being aware of the ethics and sustainability of what I buy and generally slowing down. To this end Mr Good (husband), our two daughters, Miss Four and Miss Two and I moved out of Melbourne to Ballarat. A tree change of sorts, and one that has allowed me to leave paid work for a while and spent my time at home with the girls and getting out into our new community.
This blog is to record our journey; what’s going on in the garden; in the kitchen; to share parenting wins and loses, tips, ideas or to seek advice from others; my occasional forays into crafting; review books, movies, tv; share any discoveries that I think everyone should know about; and a place to voice my opinion on issues or events. I sometimes get political, but love a good debate so feel free to disagree or put me in my place.
While this is my personal story I love the community I’ve discovered by blogging, reading blogs, commenting and hearing from others in my comments section. I’d love to hear from you too.
Barbara Good
The New Good Life 
Hi, and thanks for visiting my blog. I love the premise of yours, and I’m very drawn to the idea of simplifying life, even though I struggle with the execution.
I’ll be reading with interest 🙂
Hi, thankyou for joining my blog, isn’t it amazing how inspired you can be from others! What a wonderful time for you one beautiful child and another on the way, I’m sure whatever parenting style you have will work for you.
Actually that second child has made her appearance about a month ago, and I’m having an amazing time being a mum of two. She’s been a very relaxed baby so far. My parenting style seems to be working itself out rather organically if you know what I mean – I am just going with the flow. And yes the inspiration I’ve had from others has been fantastic.
Hi Barbara! I was hosting a giveaway at my blog for The Red Queen by Philippa Gregory, and this is just a quick note to let you know that YOU WON! So, if you could please email me your postal details to sorcha (dot) sidhe (at) gmail (dot) com, I will order the book from the Book Depository and have it delivered straight to you. 🙂
~S.
Looks like we were checking out each others blogs at the same time! I’m enjoying looking at yours too.
Just letting you know I have only just found your blog to follow it but I thoroughly enjoy going through the archives there so much great information and recipes I’m loving!
I have nominated you for 2 blogging awards if you’d like to go over to my homepage and have a look. You can pay it forward if you accept, congratulations I am glad I found you in time to nominate you xx
Thanks for the compliment slowborg, I’ve been following yours as well, though I can’t say I’m enjoying the rats! Glad you’re enjoying the recipes too. Thanks also for the award nominations, I’ll see what I can do about a response to them later in the week.
You haven’t been enjoying my baby boys?! I literally.can’t.understand. lol.
Well at least there’s the cat, the dog every now and then, and shortly a new pet!
Can’t wait til I get more rats to show you. I’ll get even cuter ones and you’ll find yourself softening…I can feel it in my waters.
Hello Barbara, I’m finding it hard to located an email for you… Was hoping to catch up with you regarding gifts for a certain someone come November… Could out pls email me? I’m more than happy for you to delete this comment from here as it really doesn’t belong, I just didn’t know how else to contact you :). Cheers, A
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Hi! I’m a long-time reader and very occasional commenter. I’m thinking of moving to Ballarat and was wondering if I could talk to you about it, maybe over a coffee when I come up to inspect the house I’m hoping to rent. If you’re interested, could you email me at the address I give below? (Feel free to delete this comment afterwards.)
Hi Skud, I’ve tried to find your email but can’t locate it. Can you get it to me and I’ll inbox you.
Hello there. We’ve just made the tree-change too although not quite so far up the freeway as you. We stopped at Ballan. 🙂 We’ve 3 kids under 6 who’ve made the move with us and with the goat and chooks and soon to be lambs all along for the ride I truly feel like poor old Barbara (particularly when cleaning that ruddy stove of hers) most days but like Tom, full of inspiration and mad cap ideas. It’s nice to hear of someone else who is (relatively) local and on the same journey. 🙂
Hello, hello, how nice to hear from someone so close and so much on the same path. Although you really are Barbara impersonate, I’m feeling a bit fraudulent now. Here you are with goats and chook and cleaning stoves. I do love Tom’s crazy ideas (though Barbara bringing home the horse was great too). I’m now off to check out your blog – love a new discovery.
Our goat Anna does look quite like Geraldine too. 😉
As for feeling fraudulent, don’t you dare! If you could see my veggie gardens and our lack of self sufficiency with food (slow journey but this will hopefully be the year) then you wouldn’t worry at all. 🙂 Anna still birthed twin kids (boy girl) earlier this year but due to her malnourished state when she came to us (we didn’t know she was pregnant) she had been unable to sustain the pregnancy and neither could she produce milk (well 20-50ml a day isn’t really worth anything to us sadly) so although we have a goat it’s not the whole milk self sufficiency it appears on the surface. 😦
I too love a new discovery and will, when tim permits, be taking a trawl through your archives too. 🙂
I am a bit further away (Sidmouth Tasmania) but started my journey towards living simply with less through necessity rather than choice. Steve and I are 2 “penniless student hippies” who inherited a 4 acre property on the Tamar River and decided to make a food forest. Its a HUGE challenge when you are living with a lot less but there are so many ways around money and learning to wait is good for your patience ;). I love reading about other peoples stories and loved The Good Life as well. Serendipity Farm has a life of its own and we just try our hardest not to get swallowed up by all of the craziness that ebbs and flows on a regular basis. Rabid mentioned you in an email and I got curious so here I am. I love the online blogging community and have met some really amazing people through blogging. Glad to meet you and I will be following your blog in my RSS Feed Reader so as not to miss any more posts 🙂
Wow, how amazing to have inherited such a property. Great name too. I too love blogging for the people you get to ‘meet’ and share in their journey.
I found you via Rabidlittlehippy (Jess) and meandered over to see what you were up to. Love the blog and love your name :). I remember watching The Good Life when I was a kid and loving the way of life. I think it planted a seed in a lot of us and opened a lot of eyes with its gentle humour. We were SO lucky to have inherited this property and even though it is steep, rocky, weed infested and full of feral cats we are learning how to integrate ourselves into this crazy system and are putting permaculture and sustainable living at the top of the list. Hope you had a great road trip with the kids. If I had to take a road trip with my kids I think someone might get strangled…admittedly they are all adults now and would be telling me how to drive… 😉
Hi Barbara, we did the same tree change Melbourne to Ballarat 17 years ago and love it here, were on a 3/4 acre block in town with chooks, fruit trees, veggie garden, the lot! I will enjoy reading about your journey feel free to check out my blog, it’s mostly gardening/cooking and a semi self sustainable lifestyle. http://www.asustainablejourney.blogspot.com Cheers – Sue 🙂
Oh thank you so much for leaving a comment. I’ve been wanting to find some other Ballarat blogs, I will definitely check yours out.
We are also huge fans of the Goods. Our backyard is not as big as theirs but it is full of vegetables! The front garden too and we have a community plot 🙂 Loved looking at your blog. Feel free to visit ours! http://akailyardinadelaide.wordpress.com
Love it! I’ll be sure to check out your blog too.
Hi Barbara, I run a gardening website myself and I’m looking to reach out and make some friends in this little online community that we have 🙂 I’ve just come across your site and it looks great!
If you would like to have a chat or have a look at my site, check out http://aussiegreenthumb.com and you can find a link there to send me an email if you like 🙂
Have a great day
Jim